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Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoJabin Botsford | DISPATCHBecause of soil contamination, the city has posted signs closing the soccer fields in Saunders Park on the Near East Side, but it does not plan to fence them off.

After a
Dispatch story was published on Sunday about contaminants, including arsenic, at Saunders
Park, the city placed
park closed signs around the soccer fields there on Monday.

But some in the Near East Side neighborhood say the city should do more to protect people as
officials await further testing.

“Basically they should have fenced it all off,” said Daryle Green Sr., a private security guard
who was visiting his father on nearby Atcheson Street.

“If they’re finding problems in the soil, they should have notified everyone in the
neighborhood.”

The city did not tell residents last year that levels of arsenic and benzo(a)pyrene in the soil
beneath the soccer fields exceeded recreational standards, or that a consultant that performed the
tests recommended that the city halt scheduled sports on those fields.

The city has no immediate plans to fence off the fields, said Alan McKnight, executive director
of the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department. “I think we’re going to monitor it.

“If we need to, we’ll take additional steps,” he said. “The field has historically not gotten a
lot of use.”

A youth soccer league was scheduled to begin its fall season there last Saturday until
The Dispatch asked questions about the test results reported in 2012.

Mayor Michael B. Coleman ordered city parks officials last week to move the soccer games to
other parks.

Burgess & Niple conducted the tests on the fields south of the site of a fertilizer
manufacturing plant that closed in 1970.

Arsenic can cause nausea, diarrhea, abdominal pain, nervous-system disorders and death.
Benzo(a)pyrene, a suspected carcinogen, is formed during the burning of coal, oil, gas or
garbage.

Rebecca Asmo, executive director of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Columbus, said the city never
told her about the tests.

“Our soccer teams, which played as part of the (city’s) KIDS soccer league, did in fact practice
at Saunders Park often,” Asmo wrote in an email.

In an interview, Asmo said that in the spring, teams sometimes practiced at Saunders.

She wishes the city had told her organization and others about the findings.

“Anything like that, it piques my concern,” she said.

“We really should have been talking about it together.”

Recreation and Parks officials plan to ask Columbus City Council to approve paying Burgess &
Niple $142,000 to perform additional tests and perform a risk assessment for the park.

Back on Atcheson Street, Green’s father, Raymond Dodson, said the city should clean up the soil
across the street at the park.

Asmo said she hopes the city keeps her and others informed. “Kids’ safety should be the No. 1
priority for all of us.”